


Multiple Histories, Many Minds

by anatomical_heart



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Dimension, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Pre-Carlos, Visions, Watching Your Past Coming Back To Haunt You
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatomical_heart/pseuds/anatomical_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the rest of Night Vale pretends to sleep, or dreams, or tends their gardens in the moonlight, or sits in the middle of their ornately-drawn Council-approved pentagrams chanting in a long-dead language to keep the demons at bay in their hearts or minds or at their doors... Cecil Palmer sits cross-legged upon the roof of his apartment building and Sees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Multiple Histories, Many Minds

While the rest of Night Vale pretends to sleep, or dreams, or tends their gardens in the moonlight, or sits in the middle of their ornately-drawn Council-approved pentagrams chanting in a long-dead language to keep the demons at bay in their hearts or minds or at their doors... Cecil Palmer sits cross-legged upon the roof of his apartment building and Sees. Parts the veil between this Night Vale, _his_ Night Vale, and the Night Vales belonging to the planes of the Other. He’s long since given-up attempts to catalogue what these Night Vales might be - alternate universes, quantum echoes of Night Vales that have come before and were deemed unacceptable by the Powers That Be (namely, the City Council, or one of the Vague-Yet-Menacing Government Agencies) and were summarily destroyed, the Night Vales yet to be, or the Night Vales its inhabitants yearn desperately for - and accepts the fact these Night Vales speak to him in the dead of the night, allow him entrance, and share intimate pieces of their secrets; he answers their call with humility and the keen eyes a journalist must possess.

He remembers the first time. 

A Tuesday. Years ago, now. Unable to sleep, the back of his throat sore from melancholy and allergies, coyotes howling in the distance. Originally, he’d gone up to the roof to bring the few members of the Sheriff's Secret Police he’d come to be friendly with a hot thermos of coffee while they conducted routine surveillance. They weren’t great company, to be sure, but they _were_ company. A distraction. An interruption of gnawing thought patterns and loneliness. But really, David, Samir, and Lori were kind and made him feel safe and cared for as they watched his every waking moment and recorded every breath he took and reminded him when to speak just a little bit louder so they could hear him properly. But when he opened the utility door to the roof that night, he felt his hearts sink: They were gone, equipment included. Despondent, Cecil let the door clang shut behind him, sat down in the center of a gold-painted hexagram that had been freshly salted, and poured himself a cup of coffee. As he cradled it in his hands, he closed his eyes against the sudden prickling of tears and inhaled a deep, steadying breath.

He was trying so hard.

When he opened his eyes again, Cecil was no longer sitting. Was no longer on the roof of his apartment building. Indeed, was no longer outside in the middle of the night. Instead, still clad in his pajama pants and undershirt, he stood in the middle of his sophomore year Unmodified Sumerian class at Night Vale High School. It was autumn, the start of a new school year, and the late afternoon sun cast an unearthly orange glow about the room, sending eerie shadows crawling along the taupe tiled floor. Late-Sumerian affixes and morphemes were scrawled in unsteady, adolescent lines on the chalkboard, and Cecil recognized his own neat, square hand near the top, demonstrated as the example others should follow. Telltale déjà vu slithered up and down his arms as he watched Ms. Almeida lecturing on a letter sent by the high-priest Lu’onna to the king of Girsu. As she spoke, she walked up and down the aisles with the stone tablet it was chiseled on so everyone could clearly see the sentence structure and the characters chosen, illustrating the grammar used by members of the upper-class. 

Blinking, Cecil looked down at himself, pressing an experimental hand to his chest; warm, solid flesh stopped its advancement. Had he fallen asleep on the roof? Was this all an elaborate dream?

 Before he could answer these questions, Ms. Almeida passed right by him, seemingly unaware of his presence, and Cecil could not help but notice she was somehow taller than he remembered her being. Point of fact, there were several things about her which directly contradicted his recollection of her. For one, she looked more sure on her feet. Certainly, she had a noticeable increase in muscle mass. Her long, dark hair streaked with white was pulled back into a practical bun - a marked difference from the bob she sported when he sat in front of her years before. But the most prominent change he could see was the long, angry scar that diagonally bisected her face starting high on her left temple and ending at the right corner of her chin. He shuddered to think of the instrument that caused it, though a ready inventory of weaponry came to mind. In the wake of those gruesome images flashing through his mind, as well as memories of the yarns she spun about her travels and escapades to obtain the artifacts she taught with... Cecil felt a sudden rush of admiration for her flood over him; her bravery, her will to survive was... well. It was simply extraordinary. 

And that was when he saw it. Or, rather, he saw himself: Cecil’s eyes fell upon a younger version of himself sitting at the front of the class in the row nearest to the door, eagerly studying the stone tablet Ms. Almeida held in her hands. And seated directly behind young Cecil was the unmistakable form of Steve Carlsberg. 

Cecil felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. 

_Steve Carlsberg._

Steve Carlsberg, who hadn’t changed a bit, it seemed. 

Steve Carlsberg, with his square jaw, dark hair, red eyes, and scales that flushed green when he was happy or nervous or excited. 

Steve Carlsberg, who leaned forward to whisper into young Cecil’s ear and pass him a note. 

Cecil - the older, pajama-clad, time-and-space-traveling Cecil of whom this story is about - turned away from the sight, his pulse racing as he swallowed down the pain and bile from his past. He did not want to see anymore; he refused to watch.

And yet... it seemed he would have no other choice. 

He held his breath as the milieu shifted and changed in front of his eyes, revealing his younger self and Steve Carlsberg huddled together in an otherwise abandoned hallway in Night Vale High School. Cozy and clandestine and pressed in tight against the door to the supply closet, they remained successfully out of sight from anyone who may have been lurking on the staircase leading to the cafeteria above them. Young Cecil fisted his hands in Steve Carlsberg’s shirt, pulling him closer and bringing their foreheads gently together, seemingly content and grateful to breathe the same air as him; a verdant, reptilian glow crawled up Steve Carlsberg’s neck as he smirked, leaned boldly forward, and kissed Cecil.

The Cecil watching them from the shadows felt his stomach twist sickly in remembrance of this moment. Remembrance of that most hideous and handsome smirk. For Steve Carlsberg smirked, to be sure; he did not smile. Except once. And Cecil voicelessly, with every fiber of his being, begged the sentient or quasi-sentient life-form responsible for transporting him to this place to not show him that exception. 

At the sound of footsteps on the staircase, Steve Carlsberg broke their kiss and looked up, trying to determine if the feet in question were coming or going or could possibly hear their shared, ragged breath. For his part, Cecil couldn’t bring himself to care about anything except the person in front of him, and leaned forward to trail his nose along the bloom of virescent scales against Steve Carlsberg’s throat, placing a reverent kiss at the corner of his jaw. 

Steve Carlsberg returned his attention to Cecil, then, his expression incredibly clear: There was surprise at first, but only at first. Underneath the surprise was a heat and a hunger that stood in such stark contrast to his typical controlled confidence. They shared a quiet moment, then, just staring at each other and breathing in tandem, waiting for the other to do or say something first. And that’s when Steve Carlsberg let out a breathless laugh, which, in turn, made Cecil light up in a grin; it brought them back to themselves. Tracing the pad of his thumb tenderly along the curve of Cecil’s eyebrow, Steve Carlsberg whispered, “You’re unbelievable.”

Standing alone against the wall, watching his past unfold before him, Cecil felt the swell and ache of his younger self’s hearts all the way down to his own mitochondria; this moment, here, this one hidden away under the dark of the stairs with Steve Carlsberg, was when he knew, in no uncertain terms, that he was...

“An utter lovesick little puppy,” Old Woman Josie declared as she set down a cup of coffee in front of a young, deliriously-happy-looking Cecil Palmer.

“I am _not,_ ” he countered, blushing wildly, shoulders rounding into a hunch as he struggled against the truth of her accusation. 

_“Mm_ -hmm." Old Woman Josie gave him a skeptical look and slid a piece of blueberry pie in front of him, offering a sly wink before carrying the Thursday night meatloaf and mashed potato special that had just come up over to Teddy Williams at the opposite end of the counter.

It took but a few seconds for Cecil to register he was now in the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. (Difficult to mistake the chipping tile and the brilliant, cosmic murals set against each wall, done in meticulous, scientifically-accurate detail. He so enjoyed the constellations and planets and galaxies that swirled and danced in realtime, and often to the tempo of the music on the radio.) Once again, the setting had changed on him without warning. Gone were the hormone-infested hallways of Night Vale High School, only to be replaced with the diner, another staple of Cecil’s youth. However, it took considerably more time for him to fully grasp the fact that Old Woman Josie was wearing an apron and hairnet, and serving coffee and blue plate dinners to the residents of Night Vale, while her Angels - the ten-foot tall, multi-colored Erikas that absolutely did not exist - worked the kitchen as short-order cooks, with their many, numinous eyes blinking in rapid, syncopated rhythms. 

And it was then Cecil knew he was not in Night Vale. Well. Not in _his_ Night Vale. And not the Night Vale of his memory, either. 

This was Another Night Vale. 

A Night Vale where Old Woman Josie held down a steady job as a member of the waitstaff at the Moonlite All-Nite. 

Where Angels were short-order cooks (despite the trifling detail that they did not exist), as opposed to just handymen.

But still, it was a Night Vale where Old Woman Josie cared for him. A Night Vale where she offered him dessert pastry and coffee and was the person Cecil went to for advice. 

That was familiar. That was what truly felt like home.

“What should I do,” Cecil heard himself ask Old Woman Josie, voice small and wavering.

“Have you prayed about it inside your bloodstone circle, or consulted with that nice woman with the Sheriff’s Secret Police,” she threw over her shoulder before asking the Angels were her short-stack of banana nut pancakes were; she sent the order up fifteen minutes ago. 

The young Cecil sighed and ran a hand through his hair. His older self, sitting next to him and wanting so much to reach out and offer some kind of comfort, felt the knotted mess of his younger self’s intestines, even in his own abdomen. A recurring phenomenon which started to unsettle him in earnest, and which Cecil could hardly make sense of. And yet... he could, intellectually, understand. Somewhat. Perhaps. Sort of. Because the boy sitting next to him was, in fact, himself. 

Old Woman Josie stepped up to him then (banana nut pancakes seemingly forgotten for the moment). She placed her finger beneath his chin, urging him to lift his eyes to hers, and said, “You have a good set of hearts, Cecil Palmer. Listen to what they say to you. Your answer will come.” Her voice was clear and strong as ever he heard it before; she was not to be doubted. And Cecil - his eyes wide and round - wanted nothing more than to believe her. So he did. He clutched her words to his chest and felt the edges of himself seal around the thought of Steve Carlsberg. Cecil loved him. Loved him in an abandoned school hallway. Loved him in his Unmodified Sumerian class. Loved him, period. 

And with that resounding answer from his hearts, young Cecil felt like he could breathe again. 

At the same time, a lump the size of a fist wedged itself into the back of the elder Cecil’s throat. “No more,” he croaked, wrapping a protective arm around his abdomen as his own hearts beat in concert with his younger self’s. He winced against the feeling of young Cecil opening in places needing light; it was torment. 

_No more._

But more there would be. 

Years must have passed between Old Woman Josie’s blueberry pie and the moment Cecil suddenly found himself dropped into. An entirely new moment that Cecil did not recognize because he had not lived it: Out back of the Arby’s, his other self and Steve Carlsberg sat on the hood of Steve Carlsberg's car, sharing intimate space and time and affection. He took passage-of-time cues just from the mere sight of them, and deduced it had been almost four years. Cecil started wearing suspenders after enrolling in his second year of journalism courses; Steve Carlsberg started wearing full suits after getting a job with a company in rival Desert Bluffs. 

Cecil lay back against Steve Carlsberg’s chest, pencil between his teeth, nose buried in a book, two legal pads open and settled against his lap. (Because, yes, he was most certainly studying by the lights in the sky and the light of the Arby’s sign for his fast-approaching mid-terms, why are you surprised?) Steve Carlsberg pulled Cecil in tighter against him, kissing along the back of his neck, fingers slipping between the buttons on Cecil’s starched Oxford shirt in search of a smooth stretch of skin. 

“Cecil.” It was little more than a low rumble in Steve Carlsberg’s throat.

“Steve...” came Cecil’s petulant reply. He had meant to sound threatening as he squirmed, distracted, but his voice squeaked out an octave higher than it usually was, instantly losing the desired effect.

 _“Cecil.”_

Somehow, it was both a single syllable and an entire stanza of poetry in one breath against Cecil’s hairline as deft fingers abandoned their quest for skin and started work on Cecil’s bowtie.

Cecil-the-Voyeur stood leaning against the pole that vaulted the Arby’s sign into the night sky, covered in goosebumps despite the hot, arid breeze ghosting its way through him; he could not look away. For the life of him, as god (or God or the mysterious force that brought him here) as his witness(es), he could not stop staring. Chest tight, he watched himself succumb to Steve Carlsberg’s clever charms that weren’t clever at all, but sick and wrong and...

...an intense wave of desire belonging to his younger self crashed over him then, derailing his thoughts and making jelly of his bones; he sagged heavily against the sturdy beam against his back.

Steve Carlsberg made a pleased noise when Cecil (at long last) relented, setting his homework aside and kissing him enthusiastically, his hands making a mess of Steve Carlsberg’s business haircut as they combed through it, worshipful.

Cecil pulled away first, hearts fit to burst; there were stars in his eyes. He looked up into the vermillion gaze belonging to Steve Carlsberg, searching for an answer to a question that pooled on his tongue. And for the first time in the years they had been together, he let something fly out of his mouth without thinking of the consequences they would bring at least three times before speaking them: “What do you think about us getting married?”

And it was as though his younger self had struck him. Cecil first let out a horrified gasp, before shouting, “No! _No!_ Why would you do that?!” His voice tore through the night like a death cry ripped from behind the iron bars of the dog park. And even as it echoed terribly all around them, it was clear that Cecil and Steve Carlsberg did not - could not - hear him. Shaking, he strained to catch Steve Carlsberg’s answer, and could not find it within himself to muster the hope that things were different for them in this strange world. That his own story was not their story.

The night itself seemed to go silent in anticipation of Steve Carlsberg’s answer. Indeed and impossibly, even the heavenly lights above and the red-orange burn from the Arby’s sign dimmed in breathless suspense.

Looking down at him, Steve Carlsberg gave a small chuckle, stroked Cecil’s cheek, and murmured with such warm sincerity it made Cecil’s teeth ache, “You’re pretty funny.” 

Young Cecil felt his lungs deflate, useless and withering. He felt every good thing inside himself drain out of his body and pool pathetically onto the desert floor, thick and toxic as oil.

The other version of Cecil, the time-weary traveler, the Voice of a Night Vale that perhaps no longer existed, let out a savage howl of rage. And in that moment he hated Steve Carlsberg more than he hated any living or non-living entity that had come before or would come after him. He had always thought hate was for the weak, for the ignorant and ashamed to cower behind, but right then he relished the anger that pumped through his veins like battery acid. He wanted nothing more than to smash Steve Carlsberg in the face, anticipating the delight he would feel at watching his blood seep into the dust and sand as he shrieked, “You’re pretty funny! That was pretty funny, huh, Steve? Pretty fucking funny! Funny! Funny! So funny!” at Steve Carlsberg’s lifeless body. He wanted to spit on his corpse, curse his family line, and rob his soul’s chance from ever attaining even a sliver of peace in whatever afterlife deigned to claim him.

But Cecil never got the chance. 

Instead, he came back into himself on the roof of his apartment building, cross-legged in the center of a gold-painted hexagram, completely drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. Eyes wild, looking everywhere at once and unwilling to trust his sight, he quickly shut them again, and sank into the tremors and tension wracking his body. That was real. Wasn’t it? Touch was real. Feeling was real. But... hadn’t he felt someone else’s feelings? Even if they were his own, belonging to another time, in another Night Vale? Could he trust his feelings? No, he decided. Feelings were not to be trusted. Unreliable, crafty things, feelings. Could he, then, trust his physiological responses? The air coming in and out of his lungs at a rate dangerously near hyper-ventilation? Yes. That was real. Trust his body. Yes. He would trust his body’s responses. And as he gave himself this permission, he noticed his hands throbbing in time to his pulse. And he knew this because he felt it. And he felt it because his hands were clenched. And he knew his hands were clenched because they were throbbing. And he knew his hands were throbbing because they were clenched. His hands were clenched. 

His hands were clenched. 

Inhaling deeply, he slowly uncurled his fingers, and opened his eyes; his dull, rounded nails had imbedded themselves between the head and heart lines of his palms, leaving bloody half-moons in their wake. A cool breath of desert air sighed against his wounds, and he sucked in a sharp breath as they stung. His eyes began to water as he slowly rocked back and forth, welcoming feeling back into his legs, which prickled from sleep. 

When he once again felt he could stand, Cecil looked up into Night Vale’s velvet sky and wasn’t sure what to make of what had just happened. Whatever it was. It frightened him. Disturbed him. (And made him curious.) Nauseated him. Troubled him. (And made him curious.)

That was the first time.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of an Alternate Universe, the first chapter in a series of potentially infinite chapters. I was fascinated by the idea that Cecil had the ability to see other Night Vales that do exist, could exist, might exist, once-existed, never-existed, etc. Night Vales that could look utterly, horrifically, wonderfully different. I guess I'm interested to see who likes this idea, and who wants to contribute? It feels kind of like my gift to the Night Vale fandom. Like... this is something that's bigger than me and I want everyone to have because I want to see what people come up with. So... if you enjoy, please let me know. If you're inspired, please let me know, and then... run with it. Do what you will with it. It can all be real because this universe is essentially a nod to the Multiverse concept in Cosmology. Which is where the titles of the story and the chapter came from and give nods to.


End file.
